Einstein was insane

From the IAmAnAtheist.com comment form:

I’ve been reading thru the comments and there are some pretty stupid people writing to you, but much of the time you don’t do much better. You wrote (quote) that if there are two perfect clocks and one is on top of a mountain but another is in a valley they will not run at the same speed.

What kind of f***s**t is that?? Do you even know what the word PERFECT means?? If two clocks are both PERFECT they will run at the SAME speed no matter where they are or how thin the air is. Philosophy is about exact meanings of precise terms, but apparently atheism philosophy is about being RETARDED. Science is about observable facts not weird mind games. I’ve got big $$$ that syays there’s not a single double-blind test that shows perfect clocks not running together on mountains in a peer reviewed journal (except maybe the Atheist Magazine of Retarded).

Nobody is going to take you at all seriously about religion if you are so completely out of touch with reality. You can’t go through life fat, dumb, and believing everything everyone says and get anywhere.

I think it’s a pretty well established fact that acceleration and gravity impact the passing of time. There may not be any double-blind experiments because there’s no judgment involved in reading the time on a clock, but my understanding is that this has been extensively experimentally verified.

I’m stunned by how angry this person is. If you were actually disputing someone else’s understanding of physics rather than just having a temper tantrum, you wouldn’t need to call someone “fat” in the process.

I always had a ningling sense that there was something wrong here and must say I agree if not in tone. How can atheists all dismiss religion when they too believe things that are so consciously insane? Atheists believe dark matter exists without seeing it, that the oort cloud exists even though nobody’s even detected it, that particles can pop into existence even though that means no cause-and-effect, that you can’t go faster than light which would rule out interspace travel, and speed of motion changes how clocks act which is probably the bizarrest of all.

Maybe these things are true, but maybe God is also true is all I’m saying. Keep an open mind.

How can you even try to compare those statements…
An atheist (most of them though) won’t categorically deny god exists. After all, that is not possible. The concept of god is meaningless to science because a) is not backed by experimental observations b) is a nonsensical combination of people’s expectations and prejudices (or else define God). You can’t formulate a precise theory with god, for you need to know what god means to do so. How can you even define god if your purpose is to show evidence god exists?

Nobody claims “dark matter” to be real. Nobody. You can even do your homework and check numerous speeches from physicists who very humbly only SUGGEST it might exist. It’s an hypothetical situation, not yet demonstrated, though backed by evidence (if we are to trust the known laws of physics).
Being open minded is a virtue science praises. It’s not because “it’s possible” that should make you believe in something.

I think there’s a difference in those “atheist beliefs” and belief in God. I wouldn’t really say I believe in the oort cloud, or dark matter, or evolution, or even gravity; more accurately, I appreciate those things as explanations of how the world works, because they have been the result of experiments or, at the very least, very smart scientists’ hypotheses based on other experiments. And the degree to which they have evidence is the degree to which I “believe” in them. I don’t think a religious person would talk the same way about belief in God.

Although, I will say Poncho may have a point if you consider science as a whole. The whole notion of science, and cause and effect, and logic as a whole is kind of like faith. For a specific example, I often hear atheists (Dawkins, for example) offer very scientific reasons why God cannot exist, and in essence taking it in faith that the laws of science still hold for God. I don’t think that is far off from the sort of faith religious people have in God.

Faith in the sense used by a lot of (particularly Christian) religious folk tend to be the kind where it is considered a virtue to hold onto a belief DESPITE any evidence/suggestions to the contrary. Ever heard the phrase “test of faith” whenever there’s any doubt cast upon a religious belief?

Faith in science, on the other hand, does not work that way. Deeply held beliefs of how the world works can (and do) get toppled and replaced (if somewhat reluctantly) based on doubts arising from contrary evidence. Sure, a falling apple that suddenly changes directions from going down to up seemingly without natural cause would not have scientists rejecting all of current science’s understanding of physics right then and there, but it would cast serious doubt on it and many attempts to investigate possible causes or new ways of thinking of how physics works.

You won’t hear things like, “The Devil is just trying to trick us! Ignore it! Let us keep our faith in Newton strong, people.” The most would be strong doubts as to the trustworthiness of the observation of a gravity-defying apple. But if the observation can be repeated, there would be no excuse made to ignore it.

As for if “the laws of science still hold for God”, I have to say that I put this on the same intellectual level as explaining any phenomenon away as being caused by “a glitch in the Matrix” or “an invisible angel/demon/spirit” or “magical powers” or “ESP/telekinesis” or “space aliens with super-advanced technology”. Yes, those explanations are simple and short, but a giga-ton of unsupported assumptions have to be made for the basis of each one.

I understand what you’re saying; however, I still feel like science can still overstep its bounds. Science never says, “This is how this phenomena works and why.” Rather, science always says, “based on available evidence, and multiple inferences and assumptions, this seems to be the best model at the time for how and why this phenomena works.” And usually these inferences and assumptions are ones that have served us well in the past; for example, the assumption of cause and effect. These are supported by many experiments, and science couldn’t be done if we didn’t assume a lot of this stuff.

But when we apply these same assumptions to God, we are in uncharted waters. For example, people who argue that it is logically impossible for God to be all-knowing and for humans to have free will are making the assumption that God is bound by time in the same way that we appear to be. When people argue that it is impossible for God to have always existed, because He must also have have been created, they are making the assumption that cause and effect works the same way for God as it appears to do for us.

Yet, where are the scientific experiments that support these conclusions? When have we ever done a scientific test that shows that a supreme being would be subject to the same assumptions which we make all the time while studying material things? Obviously, such tests are impossible. And yet some scientists have made the jump — the leap of faith, if you will — to say that these assumptions we have about material things apply to God, and use these assumptions to disprove God. All they have disproved is the idea that God is bound by these assumptions.

Zach: “All they have disproved is the idea that God is bound by these assumptions.”

True. If we just keep taking away any assumed property of something that would contradict the possibility of its existence, we can easily make falsifying anything’s existence impossible. The dragon in the garage, the orbiting teapot, the invisible pink unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Intelligent Design’s intelligent agent, Santa claus, etc. The list goes on.

Some concepts of God also go onto this list. The problem with defining God is that there are so many contradicting assumptions made about it. All anyone can really do is pick a set and point out how that set cannot logically work. Of course, the reply would be either a switching to another set with near-identical assumptions (but without that particular contradiction), or simply just “God is beyond logic.”

You asked about whether there were any experiments done to test if supreme beings share some of the same properites as material things. What supreme beings? Has one even been identified? Using your argument, I can just as easily claim the existence of the Easter Bunny as long as I also claim various inconvenient assumptions about it as being invalid since there have been no scientific tests done to establish whether holiday-mascot beings actually adhere to those assumptions.

At least when talking about properties of material items/beings that we actually know exist/existed, we have physical ways of testing assumptions about them as well as the means of using logic to derive certain conclusions. Speculations about other material items/beings are thus based on at least some supporting evidence of possibilty. The properties of supreme beings? Pure speculation from people’s imaginations without even a single testable example to base any kind of working assumption on (like seriously arguing about the impact a Purple People Eater would have on the environment).

God and free will: Without delving into what “free will” actually means, I can personally reconcile an all-knowing God with humans (and other creatures) having free will. This God, though, would have no interest whatsoever of the goings-on of the physical realm or even of the spiritual demise of humans. This God would either not intervene with anything that would affect the universe we live in, or, if God does intervene, it would be for reasons that have nothing to do with human welfare.

If I were to believe in a God, this would be that God. It’s always irked me how God is described as being supposedly so powerful and awesome, yet somehow is supposed to care about the feelings of puny little humans.

Time dilation effects on GPS satellites are compensated for in all GPS device software. Clocks on these and other satellites are in fact running slower than clocks on the surface of Earth (closer to the Earth’s center of gravity).